


shut up, shut up!!

by homoeroticmisogyny



Category: Homoerotic Misogyny (TV)
Genre: Background Relationships, F/F, Lune - Freeform, Multi, also haha gay people gay people, everyone is mentioned!! but not everyone plays a major part so im like, i simply think that slutrio masterrace, keeping tags clean, slutrio, theorlando
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-10
Updated: 2021-02-10
Packaged: 2021-03-16 08:01:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29328963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/homoeroticmisogyny/pseuds/homoeroticmisogyny
Summary: "You have a crush on Audrey."Elena knows something Issa doesn't, but they haven't figured out if they're right just yet.
Relationships: Audrey Riverdale-Kuragin/Elena Kuragina (Homoerotic Misogyny), Audrey Riverdale-Kuragin/Elena Kuragina (Homoerotic Misogyny)/Isabel "Issa" Banquo, Audrey Riverdale-Kuragin/Isabel "Issa" Banquo, Isabel "Issa" Banquo/Elena Kuragina (Homoerotic Misogyny)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	shut up, shut up!!

**Author's Note:**

> i got really into the slutrio dynamic, so sue me!! i also think the drawing rooms in the academy are really pretty and would make for great drama, so...

There are many drawing rooms in Atrox Academy.

They’re not particularly large- especially not for the standard of the time in which the school was built- but they’re sufficient, given the number of them. Plenty have large windows overlooking the courtyard, padded seating on the window sill for students who pass the time imagining that life is a movie, a hearth on one end, a shelf with a tea rack (rarely fully stocked), old books lining the bookshelves. Students will typically gather in one during free blocks to read and gossip, away from the prying eyes of their teachers, and the Homoerotic Misogynists are no stranger to this hobby, Wren, Emma, and Ava particularly meeting in a drawing room above the dining hall to share ghost stories. Theo and Orlando have one that they keep mostly to themselves by an outdoor walkway, Percy has a haunt that he frequents to scare the football players after their meetings, Zoe has learned to do vocal warmups in an empty room when she doesn’t want to bother people before dawn breaks, even Tal knows to pop into the one by the library on days that she’d like to read without the pressure of other students eyeing her down for her history books (despite the stickers she’s tacked on insisting that she doesn’t mean it in a “frat boy” way)- all this to say that the drawing rooms are an integral part of Atrox Academy living.

It is in one such drawing room that Elena finds Issa, sitting by the window and sketching- what she’s sketching, Elena doesn’t care about. What’s important is that Elena’s found her, and so they close the door behind themselves, quietly so as not to startle, still watching. A piece of hair falls haphazardly into their face. 

“You have a crush on Audrey,” Elena says, and Issa jolts, dropping her pencil, the clatter dulled by the carpeted floor.

The silence in the room is deafening- there is no fire in the hearth, the windows are closed, the air is still, and Elena stares, unflinching. Issa sputters.

“I do not,” she says after a beat, but her heart isn’t in it. There’s no fire in the hearth, and there is none behind her words.

“Yes you do. Don’t lie to me, I’m not stupid.” Elena kicks at the edge of the carpet, shifting their gaze downwards. “You’re not the only one, anyway.”

Issa stumbles for words, scratching at the inside of her arm. “Bitch,” she finally settles, trying (and failing) to maintain composure, betrayed by the blood rushing to her face. “Don’t- Don’t play fucking mind games with me, or whatever. I don’t know what you want from me, but I don’t have… I don’t have a crush on- on…” 

“Get off your high horse.” Elena sneers, picking lint off their blazer. “Who deliberately fights with people just to get their attention? You’re whipped, idiot.”

“I-!” She stands, sketchbook falling to the floor to join her pencil. She clenches her fists, indignant. “Whipped? Are you out of your mind?” A beat, and she seems to remember something. “You- you deliberately fight with her too! Stop… projecting onto me!” 

“You’re a terrible liar, you know that?” Elena says, walking forward and grabbing Issa’s wrist, which seems to snap her out of the tangent she was seconds away from beginning. Issa looks around, as though nervous that someone might poke out from under one of the armchairs and start laughing- but this isn’t a joke.

Elena had said earlier that they weren’t stupid, and they, of course, will stand by that- that isn’t something that she shares in common with Issa, but of the similarities between, them there is a glaring one that has only made itself clearer with the past few weeks spent in the Homoerotic Misogyny literature club.

Maybe Elena is over-perceptive with certain people that she’d like to be less perceptive about, or maybe they’re too bored during meetings to pay too much attention to Lucy without making any snide remarks, but Issa walking in and immediately picking a seat next to Audrey to start a fight hasn’t escaped her notice- particularly because it’s a habit that she very nearly recognizes. A frown crosses her face for a brief moment, and then it leaves as soon as the thought had. It isn’t of concern.

Elena had, a few days ago, encountered Lucy and June in the washroom outside the dining hall, which would have been an overall very mundane experience, had she not overheard snippets of a conversation they were having moments before she had walked in. 

Lucy had said something to the effect of Elena and Audrey sitting awful close during the meeting the other day, at which June laughed and- based on the sound of the faucet turning on and Lucy’s voice- splashed Lucy with water, replying that she didn’t know what she was expecting. People like that are drawn to each other.

“People like that” had stuck in the back of their mind for a few days. Not for any particularly negative reason, but it was a curious comment to them. “People like that”, in reference to her and Audrey, and what did they have in common besides bickering and short skirts and leaving the top button of their blouses open? What did Elena want from Audrey anyway? And what did Issa have to do with it?

Well, there was something- a person who hadn’t been in the conversation to begin with, dragged into the limelight like a reluctant cat at the groomers. They couldn’t stop thinking about all this- Audrey and Issa and themselves, and what they wanted, what they didn’t, if any of the play fighting meant anything, and then it clicked. It would have been frightening but, really, Elena should have seen it coming. Like she’d posited, she wasn’t stupid, but maybe she was dense.

That brings them here, to the drawing room, where Issa had been drawing and is now frozen in place, her wrist in their hand. Marble to their skin. She tries to defend herself again.

“Listen, Lena, why would I… what would… I don’t understand what I’d have to gain from- from fighting with-! It’s different, when it’s with you, when…”

“When it’s with me?”

Elena frowns, and Issa seems to grow more flustered, starting to tug her wrist away- Elena, of course, relenting, at which Issa jumps back like she’s been tazed. 

“When it’s with… I don’t know! I don’t know- we play-fight, right? A lot? And… and…”

“Jesus Christ,” Elena says, rubbing at their temples. “Issa, Issa, we have 20 minutes before our next block, right? I don’t have all day to hear you try and deny something when I know for a fact that I’m right.”

“No, you aren’t! You’re… well, you’re very rarely wrong, really, and I’m scared of… of you, but it’s not…” Something seems to strike her then, and she looks up at Elena, silent.

“What?”

“Why’d you… are you just here to make fun of me? You had to have, I don’t know,” she waves her hand dismissively, suddenly having gained some air of confidence that wasn’t there before. There’s a sharpness to her eyes now. “You had to have wanted something, right? And you… you’re not the type to just… say things.”

“Say things?”

“Say things seriously, without a reason, so you’ve got to have something in mind if you’re going to come here and accuse me of something that-” She still manages to falter here. “Something that’s got no grounding. Baseless theories, claims, stuff like that. You should know- we did debate in extra credit.”

“And you sucked absolute dick at it.”

“Because you were distracting me!” Issa laughs, swatting at her shoulder. “But that’s not the point.”

“Okay. So what’s the point then?”

“You… how do I put this without offending your delicate sensibilities?”

“Asshole.”

“You’re definitely jealous of someone, aren’t you? Of me?”

“Jealous of you?” Elena says, and the corner of her mouth tweaks into a smile. “Stop deflecting.”

“No, you stop deflecting. This whole conversation is just deflection.”

“On your half too, obviously. You still haven’t told me if you have a crush on Audrey or not.”

“Do you?”

Elena rolls her eyes, and Issa gasps, overdramatic, before hacking up a lung. Elena snorts.

“Did you think you could do that without any consequences? This place is falling apart at the seams. You probably swallowed, like, a bug or something.”

“Fuck off,” she smiles in between coughs, putting a hand to rest on Elena’s shoulder, and there must be something that shifted in their dynamic, because they’re equals again, they’re playing again. Right and wrong- this wasn’t what they Elena had expected, it wasn’t what they wanted. Or was it? They shake their head to clear it of the thought. Issa finishes her coughing fit, straightening her back again, hand moving down their shoulder to their upper-arm.

“So you like Audrey,” she says with a cheshire cat smile, and Elena nails what’s been bothering them.

“You haven’t ‘won’ just because you said that- I implied it earlier anyway. I came here to ask if you did.”

“But you’re jealous. Of little old me? Pshaw, Lena, I didn’t think you had it in you.”

“Had what in me? The capacity to, like, like people?”

“Well, I was under the impression that you loved nobody but yourself,” Issa says, and checks her nails. “But if you have a crush on the big A, on Audwey-”

“Ugh!” Elena laughs, making to push Issa away, but they’ve gotten close enough that her arms get trapped in between their chest and hers.

“Oh-!” Issa gasps, and their eyes meet again.

Maybe Elena hadn’t been transparent enough earlier.

Audrey and Issa and themselves, and what they wanted from it.

Play-fighting and being bitchy to someone who understood it, short skirts and shorter tempers, the difference between throwing a punch and punching a shoulder. Is there nothing that makes someone laugh more than the space between insults? Is camaraderie not being able to crack jokes that would offend every Catholic mother from here to the vaguely defined opposite coast from the nondescript location of their vaguely European school? Is friendship not thinking about someone, thinking about them in every class in between taking down notes about another civil war, thinking about them as they lie awake in their dorm bed, reaching out and touching the ceiling to ground themselves?

Thinking about them. Two of them.

Is being bitchy something that is limited to one person?

She and Issa are still terribly close, and there’s what’s left of a smile lingering on her lips.

Elena closes the gap.

-

“Whores,” Elena says at the club meeting on Friday, dragging Issa into the room behind her. 

Theo, from where it sits with its head in Orlando’s lap, waves, and Zoe at the back of the classroom pulls her arm from over her eyes, peeking up at the declaration. 

“Affectionately, obviously,” Lucy tacks on, feeding the shrimp in the fishtank. June fidgets with the water filter and Dieke watches eagerly as the biggest shrimp- christened “MILF” by Max- swims awkwardly to the surface of the water.

“If they didn’t mean it affectionately, would you kill them?” Issa says from the front, her coat nearly falling off of her. 

“Maybe,” Lucy says, “I’ve got lots of ways to kill people. You’d be surprised.”

Emma laughs. “You? You wouldn’t kill anyone.”

“I could try, though. Did you know that we’ve got glass bottles in the cafeteria now?”

“That’s enough murder plotting,” Elena says, leaning against the blackboard. “I don’t need to hear about how I’m going to die this week. But speaking of murder plans- where’s our BFG?”

“BFG?” Max asks, Issa making herself comfortable on the teacher’s desk. 

“Big Friendly Giant,” Dieke helpfully supplies, talked over by Wren, who offers “Big Friendly GILF.”

“Giant I’d Like to-” Theo starts, but has a hand slapped over it’s mouth by May, fully exhausted. 

“Everyone shut up,” Issa says lightly. “Our Bitchy Fucking Girlfriend, obviously,” at which Lucy and Zoe both announce, to the whole room, “What?”

“Our?” Macy, still quiet in the back, adds.

“Who?” June adds for good measure, at which Max takes the cue to ask “How, when, and why?”

Elena starts to answer. “What, is obvious, we,” she looks at Issa, who swings her feet back and forth rather smugly, “are looking for our girlfriend, our is obvious too, we’re looking for our girlfriend, who-”

Audrey walks into the room to a silence that sweeps across everyone who had been watching Elena mouth off the rest of the club mindlessly.

“Well?” Audrey says. “If you’re going to start applauding, you might as well do it now.”

“You’re both-” Lucy stumbles, and June rests her arm on her shoulder, nodding.

“Max owes me 20.”

Max jumps up from where he was sitting on the table. “I do not! The bet was on Elena and Audrey, not on all three of them!”

“Shut up!” Elena says. “You guys were betting on us? That’s so scummy. Why would we ever confess to each other?”

“How were we supposed to know all three of you were… well, you know,” Dieke says.

“Oh, us? We’re not,” Issa says, and at the groan that begins to erupt, she turns to Audrey and winks.

“Yet.”


End file.
